Hundreds of millions of people would like to lose weight and become fitter. So what is stopping them? There is certainly no shortage of literature and information available on how to improve one’s diet. But could we be approaching this problem from the wrong point of view by trying to limit the amount of food we eat rather than by changing what we eat? Victor Michaelson, Managing Partner of Consulting Group Slow Food Ulitka shared with the Voice of Russia's Eco Plus his different point of view, and he is worth listening to.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/radio_broadcast/47136388/273262229/
By: John Harrison Can people like me change our eating habits?
- Victor Michaelson: First and foremost, you have to change your mindset and don’t preach, on the one hand, and defend yourself that things that you do are because of your stressful life, because of the inability of good food around and so on. There is always a way to carry life that you are satisfied with. And I would say that there are two basic things. First is diversity, your food has to be diverse. You don’t have to stick to something specific, should it be Coca Cola, which I stress out completely, or chocolate, which is not so bad in limited quantities. The second thing is just to limit yourself, not to eat too much. We all know that we eat too much. And the first task that I would give to everyone who turns to me for an advice, is to try to limit the quantity of food you eat. But is it possible for people like me, who’ve been eating the way we eat?
- Victor Michaelson: I need to turn to my own personal story. I started looking at what I'm eating at the age of 45, which is not exactly the teenager or a toddler age. And my eating habits changed drastically, as well as the functioning of my body, my look, my health level and so on. And it wasn’t a revolutionary change, it was evolutional. I started to look what I'm eating, first. And started to try to eat less, especially in the second half of the day. It is not like you’d have to finish eating 6 hours before you go to sleep. And after the last eat for three hours you are fine, and then in the last three hours before you go to bed you are hungry and you struggling with it. It is not a good thing. You have to eat whenever you want to eat, just to eat less. Ideally, is eating six times a day. Is there a way that a layman like me can know where to get, let’s talk about dried fruit, which hasn’t got sugar in it?
- Victor Michaelson: I'm not a professional, I'm not a specialist, I'm just within this movement and spent a lot of time, even years in it, so I have some understanding. I visit markets. There are plenty of markets in Moscow, for example, and everywhere in the country. And in Moscow, we have these weekend markets. Pretty much every district would have one. There should be someone who is selling dried fruits. And you should go to this person and ask him what exactly you have sugar free. And you will be surprised how happy this person will be to show a real stuff. He would pull something and say – this is a real kuraga (dried apricots)from my mountains or brought by my friend. It looks ugly, it looks like brownish stones and you would never buy it in the supermarket, because it is not shining with the colour and so on. But if you take it home and put in a hot water for several minutes, you will have the most delicious thing in this period of your life. Do you need to become a health food fanatic?
- Victor Michaelson: Slow food is about enjoying life and enjoying food. You have to be a hedonist, but you have to be an enlightened hedonist, educated hedonist. You listen to your intuition, you listen to the general attitude and what people are saying, what people are writing about it.
You go to the market with someone who is more profound in this issue who would show that this is a good thing, this is not. You talk to the people who sell it, because at least half of them are pretty honest people who really want you to buy good stuff. And also, when you limit the quantity of food, you save money. And when you save money, you are able to buy something more expensive on the same budget. Source: http://sputniknews.com/
